


Counting Paths

by libraryprisoner



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Game of Thrones Spoilers, Inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, Inspired by Game of Thrones, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Content, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-04-11 16:53:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19113847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraryprisoner/pseuds/libraryprisoner
Summary: 15-20 years after the events of Game of Thrones. Sansa Stark is still Queen in the North, Spring has come and Jon Snow vanished the day he sailed for castle black. Will they ever meet again? How do the years change people? What is their life now ? Do they have regrets? Secrets to come clean about?First two chapters are mature contentLast chapter explicit





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the characters, George RR Martin and HBO only, same as the lyrics of Matthew and the Atlas. Also English is not my native language, so be tolerant. Don't be shy to share constructive feedback though  
> \---  
> due to alot of typos and weird formulations, I updated the first chapter and will proceed to update the other two. I hope you enjoy it nontheless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Updated !

Counting Paths

  
  
  


I crossed a clearing yesterday

Somewhere that I recognize

Counted all the paths along the way

 

Further than I’d been before

Touched your hand but nothing more

No one’s ever looked at me that way

 

Soon your touch will disappear

It’s something that I recognize

Something that I should have come to fear

 

Trace the lines upon your face

They tell a tale you can’t erase

No one’s ever looked at me that way

 

Well if I could apologize

Put the light back in your eyes

No one’s ever looked at me that way

 

\-- Counting Paths - Matthew And The Atlas

 

_______________________________________________________________________

Chapter 1

 

When spring finally comes, her hair is laced with white. 

There are more and deeper lines on her face and even though her skin is still fair, it feels different and foreign stretched across her bones.

To her, the obvious decay is just something she counts time by, like rings in a tree.

Every wrinkle marks another year gone by, another part of her life finished, another endless succession of days carved into her skin like a sign. 

Winter brought death, and spring rebirth.

 

With her body it's the opposite.

Winterfell blooms and her beauty fades in exchange, every day a bit more.

Time forms sharper edges on her face, makes her movements slower, her voice lower and her heart ache in hidden places. 

Not a very fair trade.

Although she never thought herself vain, she is concerned about her reflection in the mirror, distorted, tarnished, like waking from a long slumber, to be more tired than before.

It’s the coldness in her own eyes that worries her the most, a hardness, a firmness that won’t leave her. The bright blue staring back at her still prominent, but dulled, like a veil that is just slowly lifting.

 

She stopped counting the years of her rule, days merging into one another like a blur, like watching herself from afar. The Queen in the North, ruling like a stony figure, enduring and coping to the best of her abilities. 

When she thinks back, she only sees a haze of hectic thoughts, frantic actions and semi rational debates. Things that had to be done, choices that had to be made, arrangements, councils, plans, books to keep, worries, solutions, mistakes, responsibilities and most of all regret. 

Fighting famine, hunger and death, fighting to stay alive. 

 

At first she didn’t even realize that the winds were growing warmer and the snow was melting away, until one day the first large patches of green shades broke though the constant blinding whiteness. Stubborn like life itself.

They said the last winter lasted a generation and they weren't lying.

 

The children were the first to bring back spring into the castle, first plucking large bouquets of snowdrops, than daffodils and finally winter roses. 

Children born during the winter, children she wiitnessed growing up, fortunate enough to live.

They were almost adults now, roughly the age she was, when she first got betrothed to Joffrey Baratheon.

Many more she saw to an early grave, dying of hunger or sickness. Winter has been long and cruel, indeed.

If she was honest, she never expected to see  so many colours in her days again. 

 

_ In winter we must protect ourselves. Look after one another. The lone wolf dies... _

 

Mice, rabbits and insects populated the fields and meadows like a plaque, deer and wild sheep were seen around the castle, families with fawns and in large flocks, raising the bloodlust in 

the gamekeeper’s eyes.

Not before long the first singing birds returned too, breaking through the monotone crows croak every morning, with a song so high and lucid, it made people cry at the first tone.

 

The world that was frozen for almost 20 years broke free from the ice, that kept it in place and started turning once more, just like the wheels of the many water mills.

Winterfell and it’s Queen released a breath, for the first time not to be obscured as fog before their mouths and celebrated for almost a month the return of spring, of life itself.

But that was then.

 

Now she feels thin, stretched, like butter on to much bread, feeble, transparent. 

She wonders about regret, personal regret, mistakes she has made, things unspoken, matters unattended, feelings locked up so deep inside herself, that she sometimes doubts their existence. 

When she tries to summon them, she is only met by a numbness, an echo of her own voice, reflected touchsandfold on the walls of her memory, making it hard to understand the words at all. It is all fading, colours getting dull, sounds muffled, she can’t remember voices, can’t remember the shape of faces, sometimes she forgets even names. It’s slipping through her fingers like seaweed, every year a bit more, and the more she tries to hold onto it, the easier it slips her mind.

 

Duty kept her running through the years, kept her busy, kept her together, a ruler and nothing but. A mother to the people, a beacon to guide them, a Queen, a figure that is eatherical but not real.

But lately something had changed. She had dreams, almost every night, people talking to her, just talking, in low hushed tones of importance, people without faces, with changing eye colour, voice and shifting contours, faces she just can’t fully remember, even if her life would depend on it.

 

_ The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves. _

 

Although, there weren't much casualties in Winterfell during Winter, she took no pride in it. They got lucky, proveiling most of their supplies and resources during the battle with the dead.

Not so Iron Islands, or even King’s Landing for that matter.

Ridden by war and destruction they had little chance of facing a frozen world without paying a high price. 

Ravens brought horrific reports of sickness and hunger, begging for help, desperation of a dying realm. She sent what she could spare, but it wasn’t enough, it was never enough, and when the raven came to claim her allegiance, she refused. Winterfell split even more from the realm and the break became impossible to reconcile. 

 

Under any other leadership, this would have meant war, but Bran wouldn’t do it, Tyrion as well, and she was secretly thankful for it. They couldn’t have fought another war, not with the few men she had left, even after almost two decades. Winterfell was a kingdom of the old, of the war ridden, injured and disabled, of mostly women, and children far too young to sent into another insane battle.

Nobody deserved such a childhood, nobody deserved her childhood.

 

She felt pity for the creature that lived in her brother Bran’s skin, although she knew it was Tyrion who commanded her support. She pitied him too. Bran for being responsible, but caring so little. Always calculating on a greater scheme, a larger picture only he could see. 

And Tyrion for being powerless, against all the death, that was coming their way.

 

Sansa herself attended every funeral inside the walls of Winterfell, each and every one reminding her of the days they burned thousands of bodies after the long night, pyres so high as towers and burning for a week, day and night.

_ Porcelain, ivory, steel.  _

 

She's been steel for far too long, eventually she became ice instead, always stronger, always harder, merging with her environment, she can't remember being anything else. 

 

_ Ned Stark’s daughter will speak for them. She’s the best they could ask for. _

 

Daughter. 

She ceased being that the day her father was beheaded and her mother’s throat slit open.

 

Sister. 

No, she stopped being that when Robb was butchered at the Red Wedding, his direwolf’s head was sewn to his body. 

She still could not place a stitch without remembering that. 

Then Rickon was killed as a pawn on the battlefield, dying alone in the frozen mud, just a few steps separated from his family. 

Bran returned something else entirely.

Theon died protecting him. 

Jon was banished.

Arya left, never to be seen or heard from again.

No, she was no sister anymore. 

 

Woman.

Even though she was a wife to two husbands, she was never a real woman either. Never was a wife, never fed a baby with her breast.

One of her precious husbands had never touched her and the other destroyed everything that was worth touching.

They say love makes a woman, but she doesn’t know about love, never has, not fully.

 

When spring came, it didn’t take long for the talk of succession to return to the court table, another husband and heirs for the northern throne were suggested, to carry on the Stark name. 

Just as quick as the proposal came up, it was turned down.

The maester was too concerned about her ability to still bear children, so she didn’t even had to fight the lords on the topic.

Not that it mattered much anymore. With Robyn Arryn married and father of two sons, even less than before.

 

It’s a bitter irony though, that after they rooked her of all she ever could be, it’s finally her own inability that will strip her of the only thing she ever was. 

The Queen in the North will not have another husband, she will not have children, she won’t leave an heir, and therefore pass the crown on to a man without the Stark blood, without the blood of Winterfell, but also a man she was once betrothed to.

Robyn Arryn would have married her for the title and her claim, the exact title and claim he would inherit now nonetheless, and his sons after him. Different roads lead to the same castle. It was bitter irony indeed. 

She was the last of the Starks of Winterfell.

 

_ A Queen you shall be, for a while… _

_ No one will ever marry me for love ... _

 

She took up wandering the castle, the grounds and then outside the walls, when the weather turned more predictable and rain and storms didn’t sneak up on her like a shadowcat in the dark.

First to check on the smallfolk, a delegation always in her wake, to offer help, repairs, whatever they needed, like a just Queen would do, like her mother would have done.

But then she grew more and more eager to escape. Her world had begun to shrink, the walls of the lords chambers closed in about her, like she was a wild thing in a dark cage, trammeled in, pressed in a corset of duties and voidness.

 

People started to whisper behind her back, watching their roaming Queen leave the castle on horseback, alone, making way up North or down South without destination, just to be back at nightfall. 

 

It makes her strangely proud, the fact that she can do this, makes her feel like a rebel, a rascal,  just like Arya must have felt when she broke off to her endless adventure to go west of Westeros.

But then her little sister was always one for adventures, sneaking out the castle when she was just a child, chasing cats and hares, hair untidy, clothes ripped in several places.

 

Bran also, always climbing the tower even when their mother forbid it, both so alive, while she wasted away her days, meek and submissive sewing and learning songs.

Even though her siblings both found their doom in their recklessness, more than once, and even terminally, she can’t help herself but being envious. 

 

What a waste of life it was, to dream the dreams of others, instead of her own, to just adapt herself to the whim of them. 

Her mother's will to make her a great lady and wife to a good lord. Robb’s will of independency for the North, or Jon’s will to keep his family safe at all cost.

 

Now it is Arya’s will to break free, that rages through her mind and body, too little, too late.

 

She is almost the same age her mother and father were when they got murdered and she already feels worn to the bone. So many years she has mastered to survive, but it weighs on her like rocks, dragging her down, making her slow and sluggish, even dense sometimes. 

 

Life is change, where survival is stagnation. One is growth, the other is hiding. Both are two sides of the same medal, but so different as night and day. 

Sansa is a queen and yet she is nothing more but a wounded girl, that hides behind her duty like an armor covering her whole body and leaving no piece of skin exposed.

It's a detached feeling, like she led two lives in the span of one. 

Torn between rigid and innocent. 

 

When the world melted she stayed frozen in time, despite her changing body, her core was the same, and it was in her core that she felt more restless by the day.

Most things in life she experienced to early, and others far to late or never. There is a insurmountable gap between the queen and the girl, one that will leave her incomplete forever.

 

_ I crossed a clearing yesterday, something that I recognize, counted all the paths along the way. _

 

She finds herself mostly roaming north, where the hills rake higher and the winds are harsher, rough kisses on her cheeks and harsh pulls at her hair.

A touch of something invisible, something not seen but existent, it tears at her clothes and brings her of balance, just like love once did.

It is only then that she discovers the truth about herself, the truth about many things really, that had been existent all along. 

She knew a little about love nonetheless.

Without the chaos to her thoughts and the haze of war and survival that was upon her, she can finally stare her biggest regret in the eye. 

 

Regret is like water, she realizes, like a constant drop of water on stone, a drop in her mind, snowmelt dropping off leaves. It pools and spills and creates a river, a stream, a current even, it pulls at her, pushes her, just like the wind does, until she is washed away to a dark, quiet place, and a name forms in her mind, in her dreams, over and over again.

 

Jon. 

 

He is always with her these days, more so since she finds herself frequently  taking the kingsroad to Long Lake, or even way past Last Hearth. 

It's a two days journey to the Wall and she could make it easily, even on her own, alone as she is, courageous as she has become, but she knows he is not there. 

 

Over the years men of the Night Watch came frequently to ask for help and supplies, in exchange they brought the news of Jon Snow, vanishing with the wildlings soon after he arrived at Castle Black. 

He hasn't been seen since, and Sansa stopped making inquiries. They think he is dead, but won’t say it to her face.

 

They say a ranger leaves sometimes for five years and more, they can roam far north, stay with the wildlings, some of them have even families there, they live there, half a life, and die there, alone in the wilderness,  just like her uncle Benjen did.

 

But she knows that Jon is not dead though, not like Arya.

 

When Aryas Ravens stopped coming, she knew something had happened, after the second year she knew her little sister was dead. Most likely swallowed by the sea, or put in an unnamed grave on a foreign island. Sansa simply felt it, and she never dreamed about her sister again.

 

But Jon, he just became what he has always has been.

Snow, a ghost, a shadow. 

Just like the halls of  Winterfell remembered him. Sulking in a corner, watching the rest of them play. She still could feel his eyes on them, apprehensive and shy, afraid that he could misstep and offend, walking on tiptoes. Just as afraid to engage life as she was, so alike, but so different. And yet unfinished.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lost and found. Updated

Spring has brought many things back to her. 

Most of them she had already forgotten about, like her summer childhood was mere a dream, a part of someone else’s life instead of her own, just a faint memory, a mirage of colour, sunshine and happiness, she couldn’t afford to chase down.

But she still remembers, and it hurts her more than the cruelty that came after, she learned to deal with that, but the beauty of spring, it rips her open, breaks her heart and let’s her weep at the most trivial things. 

 

The colour of heather was one of them.

When she saw the sea of bright purple, that covered the narrow hills between Long Lake and Last River in an eternal sunset, for the first time, she had to stop and remember to breathe. Violet glowing for miles and miles as a fix point for her weary eyes,  a maze, a maelstrom of colour, another sky grown out of the ground, so different in contrast to the piercing white of winter, that she felt the moisture almost instantly on her cheeks.  

 

This was her destination, a road less travelled, coming to an end.

 

_ Further than I’d been before. Touched your hand but nothing more. No one’s ever looked at me that way  _

 

In the midst of a large patch of thick heather, Sansa crouches down on a flat stone and waits, like a hunter, a predator lurking, eyes fixed and fingers absently tugging on the plant’s furry flower heads. 

The scrub will hide her well enough, she thinks, but still cowers a little more into the thicket, just to be sure.

 

Birds nest just inches away from her, common voles dart through the undergrowth, disappearing with a squeak and a rustle.

 

She draws her skirts closer about her, wrapping herself in the grey riders dress like in a cocoon, neatly tucked to her body. 

 

It’s unadorned and simple, rough to the touch, hardened by rain and mud,  just like the one she arrived in at Castle black, more than a lifetime ago. 

A girl in grey on a dying horse, a knight to be at her side and another in their wake. Shaking, freezing, almost dead herself.

 

She wanted to die back then. Lay down from sheer exhaustion, and let it happen, become just another unnamed corpse at the roadside, rotting away in silent peace. It would have been so easy, all she had to do was succumb to the fatigue and pain and let death roll over her like a wave. Gently, liberating, just gone, from one second to the other. A candle blown out.

 

Hadn't it been for him.  

 

The moment she saw Jon standing there on the steep stairs, she knew dying wasn't an option anymore. The blank and raw disbelief, a mixture of impossible hope and restrained joy, laced with despair in his features. It will haunt her forever.

 

She creates a wide hood with her shawl, places it around her head like a halo and hides as deep inside as she can. 

He always believed that she was the one who saved him from dying, but it was the other way around. 

 

_ Let me die while there is still something left of me. _

_ If Ramsay wins, I am not going back there alive. _

 

Jon never knew how close she was to death then, maybe because he could still taste his own, so sweetly on his lips. It’s hard to taste anything else after that, it stands out, unique like opium, heavy and sticky like honey, the promise of a gentle dream, but just as deadly as every other poison.

 

Motionless she lets the low winds play around her huddled form and rakes her eyes over the country,  thinking, brooding, a giant grey rock amidst a purple sea.

 

Her country, she reminds herself, but feels no obligation to it any longer, not like she used to. 

The brief joy of her coronation turned stale so quickly, once she retreated to the Lords Chambers, with nobody but her own thoughts to keep her company.  She had to gulp the bitter taste of loneliness down with dornish wine, just to discover the taste of more ash in her mouth. 

Hard to swallow, grainy, dust clotting her tongue with sardonic clay. Once tasted she never got rid of the flavour ever again.

 

She did go through the motions though, played her part, fought every day to be a good Queen to her people, and fought herself in the process, almost to the death. 

They say be careful what you wish for, it might just come true. It was her blessing and her curse.

No more of it.

 

She searches the horizon until she finds what she is looking for. 

A bright spot, in a dimmed clearing framed by oak trees, whose branches hang so low, that it almost looks like a cave. 

There it is, unmistakingly, I shimmer, a shine. 

It waveres with the wind, almost dies out when a large gust hits it , just to rise again, brighter than before.

 

She remembers how Brienne never dared to build a fire when they were fleeing the Boltons. Although they were wet and chilled to the bone, they rather rattled their teeth through the night before they would draw attention to them and suffer the consequences of it. Fear is a powerful motor, keeps bodies moving forward, that should have collapsed long before.

Times had changed since then, but still she cringes at such carelessness. 

 

She shivers slightly at the thought, night falling quickly, the last splitted rays of sunlight already vanishing over the hills, dark purple clouds sinking so deep, she feels that she just has to reach out to touch them. 

Would they feel soft too?

Fog and mist form in the hollows, creeping up to her like a snake on the ground, or worse,  flames of wildfire, finding it’s way through every crack and crevice, like water, flowing, burning, scorching everything in it’s wake..

 

Kings Landing was scorched like that when she arrived with Arya and her army of North Men in the fallen capital. 

Fires still raging deep, the wildfire depots still smouldering by the time they came down the kingsroad to save their king. 

Four days the Unsullied kept her waiting in a camp outside the city. For nights she witnessed a greenish glowing mist rise over the city walls, creating a dome of ash and fire and fume.

Legend has it, that it still burns there, deep in the network of hidden and secret passages, crawling through the dark like a lindworm, as long as the people remember the name Targaryen.

 

_ Burn them all. _

 

The wind picks up for a moment, right after the last beams of sunlight have vanished in the east, almost like the day was mere a candle which had just been blown out. 

 

Sansa still waits, darkness enveloping her, she watches the first stars come out, like someone poked holes in a canopy.  

A peaceful silence falls, birds muted by the nightfall, wind calmed down, the earth beneath her starting to breathe, giving off it’s warmth to mate with the cold, humid  air.

 

Then she finally spots a black figure moving into camp, like a goblin returning from the moors, casting a sharp long shadow, when he walks past the fire. 

Her heart starts beating faster instantly and she staggers abruptly up from her low seat, her feet suddenly doubtful, her mind afraid. This is her destination, the end of her travels, her wanderings, herself. It’s a fork in a road she has been travelling on forever, she just has to pick the direction.

 

It’s been over a moon since the mason finished Aryas sculpture for the crypts. She oversaw it with great care, to make it as real as possible, as close as she could still remember. 

The result was the image of a young woman that held most likely no resemblance to her sister anymore, little, fragile, more a child then woman, but dead nonetheless. The sister she knew, not the stranger that died.

Just an undignified placeholder, an empty toomp in an empty wing of the crypts, reserved for the last Starks, reserved for herself, only for herself she realised, the only aged statue, among two empty graves. The explorer of the West and the missing brother of the Night’s Watch.

  
  


Once she knew nothing about battles, strategies or brutal men and now she feels like she knows too much of them. When she first came across him, just after she picked up her travels, just after she had Arya proclaimed dead, she knew what he was, knew a fighter when she saw one, even from the distance. 

At first she thought he was a hunter from Deepwood Motte, or a strayed sellsword, a relic of the war. 

 

She could tell from the start, that he was always alert and careful.

It was trained on him, sharp movements and nervous glances over his shoulder, like a wire ready to spring, like he sensed she was watching.

Too cautious and too deliberate for a common traveller. A deserter from the Wall maybe, a Wildling getting warm?

 

He avoided the roads, but didn’t hide, circled the lands in close proximity of Winterfell, like a moth drawn to the flame, but never close enough to burn.

 

Dressed in black, he was a dark spot crawling like a lone animal across the surface of the lands, just as random as she did, stopping when she did, leaving when she did, in a slow dance of apprehension, that did go on for weeks.

 

_ It’s something that I recognize. Something that I should have come to fear. _

 

She feels unhinged when she thinks about how her heart leapt then. 

Hope spreading, blooming, against her will, against her better judgement and all the efforts to root it out by the stem. 

It was a lighting to her bones, a vibrant humming of thunder as aftershock. 

Hope is a tricky thing. 

It’s fountained in the soul not in the heart or mind. 

No logic can capture it and no heart maintain it, for both are weak and can be broken.

 

But hope floats, even in the deepest and darkest sea, even in the most torrential river, when everything else is crushed and sinks to the ground, against all odds, it stays afloat. 

 

It’s the soul that endures long winters, and harsh fates, broken dreams, hearts, logic, lifes and people, and it still survives. 

Where hearts are shattered and the mind crumbles, the soul is still standing strong. 

But it’s also like a sickness, without a cure and any chance of recovery. Hope is  unwelcomed but also undefeatable, it’s essence making it more dangerous, powerful and deadly than any weapon ever forged.

Theon taught her that lesson.

  
  


The night is heavy and pitch dark upon her, when Sansa makes her way to the dancing light at the clearing, so much like a ghost light, purposed to make her lose way and get hopelessly lost.

Maybe she is just slowly losing her mind, like the smallfolk already say.

Following this shadow about the moors and heather, the movements of his long body  so familiar, her throat closed forcefully, once she realized.

 

_ Well if I could apologize. Put the light back in your eyes.  _

 

He doesn’t even flinch when she is breaking through the darkness and enters the warm circle of light his fire is providing. 

A ghost light indeed, she will never find her way home.

Their eyes meet and she feels herself crumble, stumbling on a low root and coming to an halt forcefully, barely catching her balance.

 

Sansas skin feels suddenly tight, her mind in disarray. 

Memories wash over her, when she tries to make sense of his face. 

 

_ No one’s ever looked at me that way. _

 

So changed, but so familiar, older, weathered, but none of the haunting emptiness in his eyes. 

Not like she saw him last, when the horror of his actions was fresh imprinted on his soul. 

 

_ No one’s ever looked at me that way. _

 

The silence stretches painfully and he sits so quietly, so in union with his surroundings, she feels like an intruder on something sacred. 

Behind him she registers a small tent, black pieces of clothing hanging on a cord spanned between the oak trees, no wildlings or brothers that keep him company, no horse and no wolf either. 

 

He is alone, just like herself.

There is no surprise in his eyes but he swallows hard, judgemental even, so much like her father, a small flex of his neck, when he grinds his jaw. It makes her touch her own throat nervously.

 

Of course, he had expected her. 

 

His dark eyes glide over her, obviously mapping out the change that came to her over the years. 

She does the same, this time openly. A lifetime passes before her eyes, one she doesn’t know the slightest thing about, a lifetime she hadn’t been part of, since that pier in King's Landing. 

She still feels ashamed for taking his crown, taking his life as well, making him pay the highest price possible, then.

 

“You should not be alone out here , your Grace. Not at his time”.

 

_ Do you have any faith in me at all? _

 

His voice is deeper, rougher edged, it sounds foreign like someone who hasn’t used it in long  time, speaking every word slow and unrushed, just to fall away in volume at the end, like he has always done, it’s the part that is most familiar. 

 

It’s the formal addressing to her title that wrenches a sharp fist to her gut and before she can help herself, she feels her face fall. 

Hope is also such a treacherous thing.

For a moment, she just surrenders to that ashen feeling again, swallowing the taste, diverting her eyes from him, to follow some tinder sparks on their pending rise to the night sky.

 

_ No one’s ever looked at me that way. _

 

She disguises it with practiced ease, lifts her chin in a stubborn posture, takes a seat opposite him, folds her hands in her lap, the Queen regina on her lips.

 

He pins her in place with his eyes, features obscured through the fire, blurred through heated haze.

 

“If you didn’t want to be found, you shouldn’t have lit such a large fire in the dawn, Lord Snow.”, she pauses, straightens her spine even more. 

“Neither should you have come so far down, nor roaming my lands and castle. I am sure if you wanted to stay hidden, you would have done so. You did succeed at it pretty well and for a great amount of time. So I assume you are here for a reason, or did you got lost?”

 

A treacherous corner of his slanted mouth lifts at her words and he shakes his head in a small but familiar sharp motion.

She wants to stop time for it, frame it, to keep it in her memory forever, for the time she has to oversee his sculpture maybe. She won’t make the same mistake again.

There is so much she forgot about him, details she only started missing, when she is reminded of the fact that she forgot.

Like now, this small movement is everything to her, the way he looks so much like Ned Stark, as she remembers him, is everything to her.

 

“You are being risky Sansa, roaming as far as you do, alone. A lot of bad folks are on the road from the Wall to King's Landing. Spring has brought them out of their dens, some of them murderers and rapists bound to the Night's Watch, some deserters from it”.

 

For a brief second she wonders if he referring to himself, by the latter. 

He looks rough, hardened by all those years of winter behind the Wall, his skin bronze, hair longer and some shades lighter, but the Black still on him.

 

“I know my way around brutes and rapists Jon.”

She pauses and gives him a sharp look.

“I am not afraid of them. And as far as I can tell, you are taking the greater risk. Some might think you are a deserter yourself, a crow so far from the Wall, wandering aimlessly around.”

 

“Not aimlessly”, he corrects her and takes a clay jug from the fire, pouring a red liquid in two  matching mugs.

“I take it , you still drink spiced red wine?”

 

_ Go on, I believe in you. _

 

Sansa leans over to take the offered mug from his outstretched hand, flames heating up her skin, making it hard to distinguish the blush from a flush when her fingers touch his.

 

“Not for the death of me would I ever try another beer again. Or whatever it is you brew up there on your Wall.”

 

He chuckles low in his throat, mouth hidden behind the cup as he takes a large gulp.

 

_ Can you forgive me? _

_ There is nothing to forgive. _

_ Forgive me ! _

 

“So where are you aiming to?”, she asks and guides the wine to her own lips, smelling it’s odor, knows how it will warm her up, comfort her, even before she takes the first sip.

 

“Tell me about King Bran first”.

Jon sets the mug aside, leans forward slightly, so she can see his face a little clearer, the scar that cuts over his left eye, almost too tarnished to spot.

 

“He is King of the 6 Kingdoms”, she says matter of factly, gulping the wine down, but no warmth comes.

 

“Where did you go?”, she asks in return and takes another desperate sip.

The edge is unmistakingly bitter and she plants it there for a reason, it’s a challenge, something she can’t suppress, not with him. She know she won’t get the answers she needs, not from him, never from him.

Anger rushing through her, random frustration and hurt.

He accepts the game she is offering, like he always did.

 

“North”, he mutters.

“How is Bran?”, he shoots after, when he sees her opening her mouth to speak.

 

Again she cocks her chin up sharp, orchestrates a smile.

“King Bran is ruling just and wisely. Where up North exactly?”

 

“Beyond the Wall. How is he faring Sansa? And don’t play coy, I don’t have the patience for it anymore.“

 

Her smile is quickly chased by a dark expression. She feels it on her face like a chill, her muscles turning numb, eyes dry and she shuts her mouth in a thin line.

 

“The same.” she whispers after a long silence. 

 

“The same”, he echoes her flatly, knowing what it means. Brandon Stark did never fully return to them, and the man sitting in the throne room of Kings Landing was everything but her brother.

 

A melancholic smile ghosts upon her features. It’s either King’s Landing or beyond the Wall where Stark men find their doom. Either they never return at all, or changed beyond all recognition.

 

_ We should have never left Winterfell. _

 

She looks at him again and suddenly everything feels like crumbling around her, like a vision coming to an end, a mirage dissolving into thin air.

Maybe she just imagined him all along, maybe it’s a gentle dream she is having while freezing to death, this time for good.

Maybe this is death itself.

 

For all her cleverness, for all that she knows, she knows nothing of the things that matter, and it tore at her mind for the last fifteen years. 

There is no denying it. 

Arya's death, the uncertainty of it, was just the last push over the line, that kept her separated from madness. 

Just like the Dragon Queen. 

"Sansa? Do you hear me", he asks after she has stayed silent for too long to be comfortable.

 

_ When the snows fall and the white winds blow... _

 

"She is dead Jon. "

 

Silence again and she scarcely dares not to look at him.

 

_...the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. _

 

He is just staring at the flames, face unmoving, unblinking, like a death mask. 

His grey beard shines golden, reflecting the warm wavering light and his dark eyes burn with the image of fire. 

She doesn’t have to say Arya’s name, for him to know who “She” is. 

He simply knows, for his expression grows even darker.

 

"You fear that, or know it?", he finally asks and heaves a ragged sigh at the end, bracing himself for a blow. 

Sansa has seen him doing this numerous of times before, with Robb training in the courtyard, and later on when he fought in the war.

 

"I feel it, I know it. Her last Raven came years ago."

She is hurting him again. Betraying him over and over.

 

"I didn't sent Ravens and I am still alive." He counters, still not looking at her. 

There is a jerk of his lower lip, curling slightly upwards, and it transforms his face for the briefest of seconds, into something she has never seen before. 

 

She can't look away after that. Studies him even more.

There are so many lines on his face, she can't even begin to imagine the life he leads.

 

His skin is darker, tanned from the sun reflected by the snow and ice.

His face hardened by raging winds, the horizontal lines on his forehead like furrows on a field,  but his eyes are the same, dark like onyx, framed by slanted wrinkles.

 

There is so much grey in his heavy beard and brows she thinks of uncle Benjen immediately, his hair so long that he could easily braid it, but doesn't. 

So familiar and yet so strange. She doesn’t know what to make of him, of the feeling she has for him in this moment. Pity? Pride? Regret?

 

"I am quite certain."

It sounded too sharp, too final and bitter, so she offers a sad smile to smooth out the edges, mostly to herself. 

 

"I am sorry to tell you."

 

She can sense the words behind his eyes, when they flick from one dancing flame to another and then stare just though them, beyond, unseeing eyes.

All those words he will never speak, all those thoughts he will never share. He falls back into his mind, falls behind with his brooding and suddenly rushes up to meet her with a blank expression.

 

_ No one’s ever looked at me that way. _

 

"It was wrong to leave you, all alone”, Jon finally whispers and runs a heavy hand roughly across his face. 

The stubble of his beard rasps violently, the hairs fighting against the pressure. 

It's the only sound except for the cracking fire and a night owl screaming at the far end of the clearing.

 

Valar Morghulis, Arya always said. All men must die. Who is first and who is last doesn’t matter. 

They both accept it with stoic silence until her hands begin to shake. She doesn’t want to be alone in the crypts.

 

"Do you you remember the feast before we left winterfell. The first time. When Cersei and Joffrey and King Robert came."

 

There is a sudden urge for the past that rushes through her, like the tip of an arrow piercing her flesh. She is desperate for that connection they both share , wants to dwell in the memory, just for the sake of it. To be sure it was real after all, the life they had, the promises they made to each other. 

 

She is so afraid that she got it all wrong, that her memento is nothing but a lie, her keepsake just a fraud.

Memories fade so quickly, when there is nobody to share them with, they get holey like a moth ridden quilt, unmended, missing pieces in precious patterns, moments, lost forever.

 

"You looked beautiful on his arm. Radiant even." 

Jon's eyes shoot to her under guarded brows, and he picks on a tinder to keep his hands busy. Tears it to pieces, casts every piece deliberately slow into the fire.

Something has changed in him, shifted, rearranged suddenly, like a missing piece falling into place, a wolf ready to kill. It takes Sansa a moment to comprehend what he’s saying.

 

Of all the memories she had of that feast, he picked the one she wanted to forget the most, the one she hated herself for the most that night. 

Shame washes over her in an instant and she feels her face flushed with it. It rides high on her cheeks, burning under her skin, like she was still the naive girl of 12 years. She faintly sees herself clinging to the arm of the young golden headed prince, feeling so golden herself, bathing in his false light and drinking the attention in like cheap wine. A girl’s delusion of a world she did only know in songs and stories. It ended with her father’s head, rotting on a spike.

 

"You looked so happy. You looked  **too** happy, cheeks so flushed, smile too wide. His lips were too pouty..."

He pauses and casts the last piece into the fire, it bristles and burns and dissolves into ash, just like his voice does, obtaining an harsh tone to cut through the mask she is still wearing.

"I was so jealous then".

 

She jumps into motion without thinking, sensing the dangerous grounds they tiptoeing on, like thin ice on a frozen lake. Too much bitterness and melancholie lying beneath it, too many ghosts, too many things left unsaid. A silly girl she sees, carelessly cruel, ignorant and vain.

"Because you were a bastard. I saw you at the far end of the hall..."

 

"No", he cuts her off firmly, sees how her carefully crafted mask finally crumbles on her face, like the ash of the tinder before.

"Because of you."

This time the warmth doesn’t abandon her. It rises up in her cheeks again and sets fire to her brain.

"We speak plain now, don't we? No need to lie or bend the truth. It’s why I am here. Why I came back. I am tired of lying and I am too old for it.", he goes on and his clothes rustle when he shifts his weight, a fraction closer to her.

 

"You know what I am talking about, don’t you ? Back when we were children, when we left Winterfell, even more so when you came to Castle Black that day. Something was there. When I loved Daenerys, and I did love her, it was there. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but never gone. I kept a vow, I broke a vow. Killed my Queen, kept my family safe, kept you safe. But it was always there, even after her, with every other woman I have lain with since, Sansa."

 

 "I thought you should take no wife, father no children." It's a petty diversion she is throwing his way, and she regrets it the moment the words leave her lips. 

 "And I didn't."

 

"Neither did I."

 

His face grows very dark at that and the fleeting glance he is shooting her, before his eyes flick back to the fire, is matching hers, searching, diving deep in each others eyes, begging for the truth to come out and show it’s ugly face. He knows very well what she is saying but brushes it off. He knows everything he needs to know, with just one glance at her.

 

"Sometimes I think you knew it all along. When I was young I felt ashamed, but I was a Bastard, I thought that is how Bastards must be, depraved like that. When I saw you again, I thought I came back wrong, for it was even stronger and when Sam told me who I was, I was so relieved. It hit me like a lightning bolt, and I accepted it, without hurry and rush. It has always been you, you must know that.

But I couldn’t … I… we were at war and after... she was gone you were poison to my heart, not because I loved her, but because I couldn’t love her over you."

 

"I know", she just mutters into the peace after his confession. A confession she already knew about. Sansa feels the years clinging to her legs, adding more weight to her regret by the day, it’s slowing her down, maker it so heavy to move, that she finally stood still years ago.

 

"I know how it feels to be jealous." She touches her lip warily, remembers absently the curve of the Dragon Queen's lips. Plump, pouty. 

"I hated her", she sneers and feels guilty at the harshness of her tone. 

 

"I hated Littlefinger", he states matter of factly and keeps his gaze on her this time. "I would have gladly killed him." She is kind of horrified how happy she is about the sadistic smile he is giving her then.

"I hated Ramsey, and I did almost kill him”. She held him back. 

“Same with Theon."

At Theon's name though his smile ebbs away. 

"Had Tyrion ever touched you, I would have wanted to kill him too", he ends on a amused note, to spare her the pain over losing her friend and fifth brother.

 

All men must die. Almost every men he mentioned did die in the end, even though not by his hand. The four men he wanted to kill but didn't and the one woman he didn't want to harm but killed. The quite beautiful and cruel Queen he was in love with, so many years ago. Even Sansa didn't want her do die, she reminds herself. No, never that. Not from his hand.

"I knew you did it for me". 

She spits it out like bile, like a lump in her throat that has been sitting upon her heart for far too long. 

Daenerys of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons. 

In her imagination she sits between them in the raging fire pit, they both are staring into. Silver hair, silky and heavy, violet eyes, smooth pale skin and breasts, a smile in her eyes when she looks Jon, and disdain when she looks at her. 

The pain is sharp, starts under her rib cage and floods through her stomach like acid, makes her sick, dizzy, contract.

The  beautiful Dragon Queen suddenly burns before her eyes, like the sacrificial lamb she was for Sansas selfish intentions.

When she told her former husband about Jon's true name and decent, wanted to make him King instead of her, she set the process in motion, who left Jon little choice in the end.

Made him kill his lover, along with the chance of a happy life, sentences him to banishment, cursed him to live out his days on the Wall, never take a wife or father children.

She did it all, and she did it calculated.

 

"I didn't mean it".

It's just above a whisper, but she knows he can hear her. It's not even addressed to him, but at the burning creature in the fire, who is staring at her in mistrust and melting rage. It’s the same, she decides. In the end he is still a Targaryen, the rightful heir to the iron throne, marked by his aunts blood and love. Snow and flame, fire and ice. 

 

_ Did you bend the knee to save the North, or because you love her? _

 

"You wanted something for yourself”.

Sansa wants to protest, mind working fast, wants to tell him that she did it all for him, but as soon as she opens her mouth, Daenerys Targaryen screams at her with shivering lips. 

“No! It it’s not the truth.” 

She did it all for the realm. No, not the truth either. 

She did it all for the North, false. She did it to protect her family, false. She did it because she needed to tell someone, false. 

She did it because she was afraid. The Dragon Queens features show a victorious smile and her eyes glow even brighter.

 

“Yes, I did. But not the Iron Throne or the Northern Crown”, Sansa says in realization and feels hot tears burning behind her eyes.

Slowly she feels this raging pain, being coated over, it ebbs away until it’s just a dull ache, still there, still strong if she would let it rage, but tamed, at least for now.

“I wanted YOU for myself." 

It’s so easy on her lips suddenly, like it just slipped her tongue, sitting there waiting and ready to spring for decades.

 

Jon simply looks at her with a blank expression, searching her face and form, following the path of the tears that have escaped her lashes. 

There is something in his eyes she recognizes from before, but different.

A victorious gleam laced with sadness and for a moment she confuses his eyes with a more purple shade.

Years and years, and decades, it was always there, hidden, so deeply hidden, she almost forgot herself.

The moments stretch and her cheeks begin to burn under his stare.

 

His calmness starts to disturb her, like the lull before a storm, or the anxious silence before a battle. She has seen both before, both in him too. The pure simplicity of it, brutal and inevitable.

 

“Just like I wanted YOU for myself before Sansa, since we left home all those years ago.” 

 

She nods slowly, releases a breath and discovers a small smirk in the left corner or his mouth, returning the nod. Simplicity, and an agreement.

 

“You loved me to early and I loved you far too late”, she closes with another nod, letting the words sinks in, then soar around them, like a million fireflies.

 

There is nothing left to say. All secrets out in the open, dragged from that hidden warm place of a heart, to shiver naked under the clear northern night sky.

The Dragon Queen has gone, fire burning low to just embers and Jon rises languidly to his feet, shaking out his coat from ash and kindling, shaking off his guilt too, then offers Sansa his hand.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mature and explicit content.
> 
> Updated

She takes off her dress, shift and smallclothes herself, layer by layer until she is bare before him and he does the same. Shedding every piece of clothing, like the skin of a former life. Daughter, Bastard, Little Bird, Crow, Hostage, Prisoner, Murderess, Traitor, Lady of Winterfell, Lord Commander, Wife, Lover, Queen and King. 

It's a calm moment, not heated, not like youth, it's deliberate, premeditated. 

There is no rush, no need to tear at each others clothes and fumble in the dark, with groping hands and sharp nails. 

This is different, it’s the implementation of things already done numerous times before, in their dreams, darkest desires, with their minds and eyes, before it even reached their bodies.

 

Sansa reaches up and  behind her, frees her hair from the braids to come down around her shoulders and back, shakes it slightly and then stand motionless again, arms resting at her side, lets him see all of her.

There is no use to hide the scars that stretch across her body, too many of them to cover them all at once and she wants to wear them with pride, like battle scars, a symbol of victory, not survival. 

 

They are fine lines by now, like branches of a tree, every now and then there is a larger blotch in a roundish shape, that reminds her of leafs. 

Hot coals they were instead. Ramsay Bolton liked to put them on her, making her scream and beg for mercy, he would grant it, but just to carve into her skin with a fine blade instead, connecting the raw spots with each other like he was playing a child’s game, laughing and giggling all the way through it.

For her it doesn't matter anymore, she took her revenge.

Jon though, has trouble overcoming the space that is still separating them, a gap large enough to make her shiver from a draft. She can sense his hesitation, his eyes quickly flicking up to hers again, after he has seen everything. Holding his gaze, she just breathes.

 

When he finally extents his arm, she feels the atmosphere change, like electricity, crackling tension before lightning strikes.

He tucks gently at the ends of her long hair, instead of touching her scars though and she follows his fingers with her eyes perplexed. Watching him smooth his calloused thumb over the dulled red tendrils, hearing him taking a breath.  

She almost feels apologetic. It’s not as deep in colour as it used to be, laced with white and grey,  it became a paler shade that reminds herself more of parts of Lady’s furr. 

 

He chuckles of the sudden, taking another step closer and let’s his whole hand be washed over by pale red, cascading silk. She could drown in that sound, a soft low laugh, just like rumbling thunder, his face exquisitely open, he seems decades younger and she is feeling immediately light headed from it.

More so, when he tucks a loose strand behind her ear, follows it with his fingers, all the way down and accidentally brushes the bristled back of his hand against her left breast. 

It is intoxicating to watch the descent of his fingers and he smiles at her like a boy learning a secret. 

 

_ Kissed by fire. You know nothing Jon Snow. _

 

Sansa can not help but smile at him in return, searching him out with her eyes and be completely consumed by it.

There is so much that has changed about him, and she wants to map out every detail, catalogue it even, not to distinguish but to learn. How did she not see it before?

 

The lean muscles than connected him to boyhood are gone, he got heavier, stockier, more man than boy, altered, like she was, rounder curves and softer bits. But his chuckle, his smile, always so reserved and hidden and serious, stayed the same.

She lets her eyes wander further, over the curve of his shoulders, down his arms, forearms and hands, his legs, loin, thighs, his stomach still firm, a line of dark  hair leading from his belly button to his manhood.

 

Suddenly she freezes and lifts her hand to hover over his quest, almost touching his skin but not quite, feeling the warmth of him on her fingertips.

 

She does not have to make contact with his scars, to feel her heart breaking.

What a hypocrite she is, to be afraid of his pity and giving him nothing but in this moment. He doesn’t deserve one bit it.

 

A wave of numbness washes over her, something she knows well by now, and her knees start to shake, her hands too.

He senses it instantly, catches her hand that hovers mid air between her stomach and his, as if her impending touch would burn him. 

But with the jerky motion her knuckles still brush against him in a flyby, making the moment even more surreal. The first joining of skin against skin, tainted with the horror of what she sees.

 

All these almost perfectly straight cut lines caused by a dozen of knife blades, old scars, dark in colour, smoothed over by time, but not closed. 

She can't break her eyes away, her mouth moves in mute words, that never make it past her throat. She wants to tell him that she is not appalled or disgusted but utterly hauled in sheer despair. 

He could have been gone a long time ago, he was gone, came back, just to almost die over and over again. 

But those were the horrors she knew off, the same she wore on her skin.

 

What breaks her are the new scars, the ones that are still red and angry and stand out from his skin in sharp edges. 

Blades mostly again, an arrow from what she can tell, teeth of wild beasts, burns, tears, cuts, bruises.

 

He could have been gone so many times by now she realizes, just like Arya, and she would have never known. No raven, no certainty, just an empty grave to morne at and a lifetime of regret. Just as she feared.

 

A rough hand, also scarred, sneaks up the base of her neck and into her hair again. It makes her shiver with cold sweat and she closes her eyes promptly at the touch. 

 

She has seen enough pain, death, and fear, she is bursting with it, ripping at the seems that hold her skin together and a strange sound escapes her, almost wheezing as she tries to force some air into her lungs. 

She is alone in this darkness suddenly, numb, cold, it’s like death itself.

 

Jon is pulling her silently towards him, pulling at the hand still lodged in his, at her neck and shoulders, until she meets his bare chest with her cheek. 

She is strangely aware of his coarse hairs there, drawing in a ragged breath when she feels his lips cold on the crown of her head. 

He cradles her head with a large hand, locks her under his chin and over his heart, skin warm and clammy, grip almost painful.

 

She hears her own blood rushing through her veins like a roaring stream, her thoughts equally loud and chasing each other like in an indescribably speed, like an impending waterfall. 

Chaos, all is just chaos, and she feels like falling herself, drowning slowly, gasping like a fish out of water.

 

He just holds her, impossibly solid, like a rock she clings to in this mess, until she hears it and her raging thoughts narrow down to follow just this one sound. 

 

Underneath his slow breathing and the wild rush of blood to her head, there is unmistakingly a steady heartbeat. Rapid like her own, but loud and strong, as only a living thing can have it. Proof, the only proof she needs right now.

 

Sansa’s arms come around him hard and she is clinging to that reassuring sound like an anker. Beat, thud, beat, thud beating of a heart, breathing of the lungs, warm skin, he is alive, arms that hold her, lips that make her way from her hair to her temple, to her neck, to her shoulder while his heart is picking up speed.

 

He nibbles at her flesh between neck and shoulder and her knees give finally out, leaving her helpless in his arms with a heavy sigh.

 

Warily she lifts her head ever so slightly, braced on his chest, expects him to say something, but is just met by his lips again. 

First on her brow, then her eyelids, then cheek.  His hand sneaks behind her head, pulling her to him, when he finally claims her lips. 

The warmth of his mouth is foreign but familiar all at once. 

It tells her different story of him, and any idea she had of him in her mind, is chased away. 

This is Jon Snow to her now. 

Beyond the bastard, the crow, the wildling, the traitor, the fighter, the brother and the heir to the iron throne, this is his true self, she thinks in a haze and touches his cheek to bring him even closer.

 

For decades the only memory of kisses where the ones that got stolen from her. Taken by force, ripped from her mouth with brutal fersosity, but this is so different it frightens her deeply. 

It  awakens her, too. Like a strange cord pulled taught, tense and trembling with power, ready to snap. 

Like the elixir of life itself, it fills her up to the brim with vigor and courage. 

When she parts her lips for him and gets the first taste his tongue, she forgets that it was ever different. 

 

He tastes so much of home, that she gets drunk on it within seconds. Her arms come around his neck hard, leaving her bare breast to scrape at his chest, her nipples sensitive to the touch.

 

Her ignorance for love backlashes violently and she feels like losing her mind. A foreign feeling floods over here like a riptide, each time pulling her further out into the current. 

She is reeling already, breaking her mouth away with a harsh breath and she buries her head in his neck, all too much of the sudden. 

 

His arms comes around her, tracing lazy, soothing lines up and down her spine, she can feel the expanse of his ribcage beneath her own, his hard manhood trapped between them and his mouth at her ear. 

 

Everything tastes of him, smells of him, feels like him, such a heavy presence on her senses, in her arms, enveloping her, that she feels tiny and weak suddenly, broken and crippled by a sadness that has been lain over her for far too long. Like something was trapped inside her.

 

It's scratching its way out, like an wild animal, with claws and teeth, bites at her insides and rakes at her nerves, until it breaks free violently, as silent tears fall hot on Jons shoulder, vanishing over the curve of his neck. 

She sees them go, follows their path with a shaky hand, smudging the wetness over his skin, like sealing wax to a letter and feels a single warm stray drop run down her own back.

 

After that everything is clearer, like a festered wound broken open and cleaned to heal. 

 

She rests her head against his for another long moment and steals some of his calm, just breathing together, breathing each other in silent understanding. 

It’s warm and soft where they meet, breath ghosting over her neck, making her flesh break out in goosebumps. 

With a feeble hand she touches his chin lightly, cocks her head and guides his lips back to hers once more. Mouth warm and wet and so tender, she feels his embrace tighten even more, his hand sliding down between them, along her rounder stomach and hip, past her red hairs and then between her legs.

 

It seems so easy suddenly, doing this, without being afraid, without pain, without having to recoil a demanding touch .

Cause his touch is not demanding at all, it's leisurely, slow and she find herself yearning for it even more so. 

 

Jon swallows her moans with his mouth, when he slides two fingers of his burned hand between her folds, opening her up like a delicate flower, like one of those seashells from the Iron Islands, easy, gentle, sure and steady. Different, so different she forgets that she once was disgusted by this.

He hits a place just at the top of her womanhood, the pearl that is hidden there and she moans again, breaks free from the kiss and hisses in much needed air.

 

Lips instantly on her pulse point he sucks at her eagerly there, while he repeats the motion over and over.

Slow, torturous, so sensual, that she thinks she might die from the pure tenderness of it.

 

She nudges his cheek with hers, lets her soft flesh rasp over his beard and relishes at the sharp contrast , breathing heavily, rolling her hips toward him, feeling him falter at his ministrations and releasing a sharp gasp. 

 It’s a delicious reward for such a tiny movement.

Would it be common to call men beautiful, he would be the embodiment of it, mouth open, eyes closed in concentration, utterly helpless, like herself. 

 

Sansa does it again, letting her fingers sink into his long curls and places a demanding kiss to his jaw, just below where his mouth is forming the most savage sound.

 

Boldly she brushes her knuckles down his ribs and sides, past the sharp edge of his hip, so unlike her own, and further to the small of his back. His manhood jumps slightly and comes to rest just above her navel, warm, heavy, firm.

 

Such a minor unexpected movement, and still, through all the haze of lust, it that makes her recoil as if burned.

 

There it was, another secret ripped from her heart, a nasty crawl of her skin, a bitter taste of fear, rising like vomit in her throat. 

 

_ Your words will disappear. Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear. All memory of you will disappear. _

 

Words. Only half true.

Ramsay Bolton did not disappear after the day his hounds tore him apart, bite by bite.

She hears him laughing and grunting, somewhere out of the shadows of a far corner of Jons tent, like a little toad hiding in a burrow, screaming his spite to the world. Laughing at her, at them, mocking hysterically, like it was his one true joy to haunt her.

 

_ Trace the lines upon your face. They tell a tale you can’t erase. _

 

She winces involuntarily when Jons forehead comes to rest against hers, framing her face with both hands and drawing slow circles on her cheekbones. He knows, he has always known, without asking.

His eyes are black pools, actually brown but so dark, like water in the depths of a well, getting darker the more it descends, reflecting every bit of light on its surface ten thousandfold, like a mirror.

 

She sees herself there, staring back at him, at herself, pupils blown and jutting back and forth, forming a mute question.

Her hands come up to close around his wrists, touching the soft skin at the inside, before slipping up to peel his fingers gently off her face.

It’s an answer and it is enough, she decides, he is enough, everything she ever wanted, never the crown, never the power.

 

_ Brave, gentle and strong. _

 

Offering him a shy smile, she kisses his palm, let’s Ramsay Bolton choke and smother on his mocking laughter and then clasps both hands around Jons right forearm, sinking to the furs, tugging at him to follow and leading him down with her.

 

It's a small bed he’s made for himself in the tent, simple in furs and padding for the ground but Sansa doesn't care. 

She has slept in fine linen for the almost last two decades, and it didn't give her nearly as much comfort and warmth as his cot is doing now. 

Here she is the fire, he is, they are, lit by each other, it's impossible to feel cold with him. 

 

She stretches out , carefully, only a single half burned down candle illuminating the surroundings and waits for him to settle down with her. 

The flame fickles in the draft of every movement and casts alienated shadows around them.

 

When he finally comes to her, the candle almost dies out from the rush and she guides the hand she still holds by the fingertips to her breast, uses her own to touch him in return. His ears turn a delicious colour of red, so does his neck. It reminds her of a ripe peach. The earlobe especially, coated with fine hairs beautifully flushed. She can't help touching it, taking it between her fingers, caress it with her mouth and then her teeth. 

 

They touch so fiercely , kissing, nipping, sucking, the brush of hair ticklish, her fingers dip into his navel and he keens pitifully, his head drops to her shoulder, his hot lips moves to catch a hard nipple, his hand again between her legs smudging the wetness there, then his mouth on her womanhood, his tongue on her pearl, her touches seeking him out, the lean muscles of his back, his manhood, everywhere on his body. They slide against and over each other, curl around each other to taste every bit of skin they can reach, it is almost by accident that he slips finally into her. 

Her earlobe between his lips and one hand beneath her, lifting her to him so gently. She turns her head  and looks at him in recognition, wets her lips, moving slow and sharing the same breath.

 

Her lust peaks with her eyes fully on him, fighting to keep them open through the feeling that is rushing over her, overflowing,  like water flooding the Riverlands in spring.

Using his hand on her pearl he prolongs it as long as possible, merciless, like he wants her to break.

To break free, not to break in, though.

And she does, until she seizes into him and holds him as close as possible, attacking his neck and bites his shoulder.

He slips out of her then, returning her moans as he continues the motions without being inside her, again and again. Sansa catches his loose bottom lip between hers, feels him shaking, humming, pulled taught, until he snaps, drops his head to the crook of her neck and his seed coats her inner thigh and her swollen lips.

 

_ He won’t ever father a bastard. _

 

It is true what her lady mother once said about feeling as one, for she does not know where her body ends and his begins. They are one, forged together by sweat and heat, like their bodies were meant to fit together. Neither of them dare to move, his weight a welcome, crushing pressure on her body.

 

Her world is reduced to only him, his scent, the feel of him, his body on hers, his breath on her neck, his lingering taste, his heartbeat.

It could be a life, one she really wants, she thinks dizzily, so tired suddenly, so tired of it all. 

 

Sansa puts a weary hand it his hair, cradles his head to her breasts  and feels him take in a long heaved sigh.

 

"Where will you go now?", she whispers and feels tears stinging in the corners of her eyes, salty, pooling over, running down her temples in a straight line and wetting her hair.

 

_ Soon your touch will disappear. _

 

Jons breathing stops, picks up again and she feels his ribcage expand with a sigh, his weight shifting, settling beside her, leaving her.

 

Cold air rushes in the space between them and she could weep at the sheer emptiness of it, the contrast to sharp for her senses to comprehend.

 

Shadows dance before her, when the candles flame bows, twists and bends, some shaped like nothing particular, but maybe a large potato, others she thinks are fishes, stags, lions, dragons and wolves.

 

_ Where will we go. _

 

"I would take you with me". He won’t return to the wall then.

Sansa can tell from his tone, that he thinks this is impossible.

The Queen in the North, Ned Stark's daughter, the only Stark at Winterfell left, being stolen away by a dark Bael the Bard figure, stolen by a Wildling, who claimed her as his.

“You are still banished”, she sighs as she forces her mind to work out an solution. 

A wicked smile plays across her mouth.

Why shouldn't it be? Let all their graves in Winterfell's crypt be empty then.

 

_ You will be fighting their wars forever. _

 

With a roll to her right, she takes one of the furs with her, drapes it over them both, when she returns in his open arms.

"Let them sing a song about it. I don’t fear the cold."

 

And what a song it would be, of love, and dangers, Queens and Crows. A maiden fair, a she-wolf,  waiting, biding her time until her red fur was lightened to brown, blonde and white, howling at the moon every night.

Wandering the castle grounds, escaping, wandering her lands, her territory, further and further, searching, seeking, finding someone long lost. A ghost white wolf like ice, red eyes like fire. To steal her away, to take her up North, roaming together, howling, mating, the last of them.

A new pack.


End file.
